


we are here as on a darkling plain

by Gwerfel



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, Period Typical Attitudes, Sexual Tension, Tent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-02-01 03:38:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21360865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwerfel/pseuds/Gwerfel
Summary: The shock of contact, even over his clothes, is enough to make him start, his eyes snap open. He makes to sit up, but Hickey shakes his head and presses him back, tutting, “Now, Sergeant,” he says, “the point is to rest.”And god save him, Tozer lies back down. Because he is tired, and because he thinks he already knows what kind of man Hickey is. He knows and he does not know, and he must find out.
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey & Sgt Solomon Tozer, Cornelius Hickey/Sgt Solomon Tozer
Comments: 13
Kudos: 53





	we are here as on a darkling plain

He struggles slowly out of his slops and finally feels the air on his skin. His shirt clings to the damp, creased parts of him, turning them cold. He lies on his back, his muscles sigh and his bones creak. 

The canvas above him glows bile yellow, the air is musty with mildew and too close, but he doesn’t have it in him to care. They’ve been ordered to move as little as possible between duties, and the relief Solomon feels to be finally recumbent is as powerful as a dose of laudanum. 

Only one day of hauling, and Tozer can already hear the clock ticking down for most of them. Morfin is half blind and hiding it, which hardly anyone has noticed because they are each suffering private agonies of their own. 

Half the men are already sick and won’t own up to it, too frightened they’ll be left to rot. Seven straight hours on land and they pine for the ships already, they long to crawl into their hammocks, the little hollows they carved out for themselves over years of long dark nights. Hoar had his own berth on  _ Erebus _ and is churlish now he must share a sail-made tent with the ship’s boy and two petty officers. Mr Diggle gripes over the loss of his stove - which caused him nothing but grief since they set sail, as he tells anyone who will listen. And few men will listen, because no one wants to talk about food. Such longings will break them before too long. 

Tozer himself has no particular complaints, or none he will share. His only trouble for now is an aching back and an empty belly, and he counts himself lucky. At some point a man must make a pact with himself, and Solomon did that long ago. He is single-minded, and that is the only way to survive this. 

He now has four hours before his next watch, and the tent is his alone until Pilkington is relieved. Every minute is precious now, and must be treated with care, used sparingly. Tozer clears his mind, closes his eyes and waits for sleep to drag him under.

It’s only sail and blankets between him and the hard broken shale, he feels every rock grind and click against his spine, cold and hard like everything else. He remembers lying down to doze on a hillside on Kersal Moor as a boy, the grass warm on his back, hawks flying overhead, lambing season underway. It is spring now, in the Arctic, of that he is assured, but there’s no life, no sweet scents, no blue in the sky. He’s not sure he could cope if there was; the state he’s been lately, he thinks springtime could kill him. 

Solomon drifts somewhere between the Arctic rocks and the Manchester sky, where his body is not his own. Perhaps he sleeps, he can’t be sure. If he does succumb, it is shallow, a foot in either place. Time stretches blankly until he is disturbed by a noise down by his boots, at the tent opening, and feels dredged up out of whatever peace he had found.

He doesn’t open his eyes, thinking it must be Pilkington who will only want to lie silent and chase his own rest. It is not Pilkington. 

The creature who enters his tent, tugging off his boots and letting them fall in neat soft thuds, is, as usual, somewhere he ought not to be. Solomon still does not open his eyes, but he senses the shape of the man, he senses the smooth considered movements and feels the tendrils of agitation that coil in his belly like a nest of vipers.

There was a boy in Solomon’s village who killed adders he found in the longrass and nailed them to trees. For no reason anyone could tell; he was just a spiteful little shit. Cornelius Hickey reminds Solomon of that boy, who came to a bad end, strung up for some crime or another. 

His eyes are still closed, but Hickey knows he is bluffing. He sits beside him. 

“Good evening, Solomon.”

“Sergeant Tozer.” Solomon murmurs, giving up on rest.

“Sergeant Tozer,” Hickey corrects himself casually, without respect, as if it is one of Solomon’s peculiar quirks, wishing to be addressed properly. No matter; Tozer is past caring when it comes to Mr Hickey. If a flogging didn’t whip sense into the caulker’s mate then no man can save him from whatever he’s moving towards.

“What do you want?”

“Came to see what you were up to.”

“I am resting. As you should be, it’s more of the same tomorrow.”

Hickey makes a slow hum which Tozer cannot read. He opens his eyes and turns his head to look at the man. For all his bootless grumbling on  _ Terror _ , his recreant avoidance of even the simplest orders, Cornelius has been nowt but smiles and good humour since they left the ships. He sits cross-legged now, impish and bright-eyed, watching Tozer. 

“You’ve your own tent. Go there.” Solomon grunts, closing his eyes again and turning his head away, meaning to dismiss him.

“Magnus is snoring.” 

“My heart bleeds.”

He hears Hickey exhale sharply, and takes it for laughter. He ignores his own pathetic flush of satisfaction at having amused Cornelius, and rolls his shoulders hard against the stony ground, trying to settle himself back down. The shale gives way easily beneath him, a divot to cradle his restless limbs.

Hickey does not leave, he fidgets quietly. Tozer hears the thin rustle of paper and smells stale tobacco. He does not need to look, he can clearly picture those white fingers deftly working the paraphernalia into a slim cylinder, his sharp pink tongue flicking along the paper’s edge, wetting it enough to stick. At least he’s not talking. Tozer doesn’t think he could bear up to the way Cornelius hammers away at conversation, not until he’s had some real sleep. 

“Want one?”

Solomon doesn’t reply.

“Be a pal, I owe you, don’t I?”

Tozer stiffens slightly. Hickey hadn’t yet mentioned the baccy Solomon left in his hammock. He’d thought perhaps Billy Gibson had taken the credit for it. Not that it was any skin off Tozer’s nose. “Wasn’t anything.” Tozer murmurs.

“It was a kindness.”

Tozer grunts, closes his eyes tighter, shifting himself deeper into the rocks. 

“I’d like to repay it, one way or another. Won’t do to be in anyone’s debt, not this late in the day.”

Tozer knows that Cornelius is not talking about the lateness of the hour. He knows by now that Cornelius is never speaking about what he seems to be. 

He still doesn’t reply, because that will most likely irk Hickey, and that is really Tozer’s only defence in this moment. He hears him move and his stomach pulls taut.

“Perhaps after, then.” Hickey says, and he doesn’t sound irked, he’s speaking softly, and Solomon thinks that maybe he will let him sleep, maybe all Cornelius wants is a quiet place to sit.

Tozer uncoils, somewhat. He breathes easier, and lets the dark red behind his eyelids soothe and settle him back to sleep. But of course Hickey is not here for refuge. No sooner has Tozer allowed himself to sink into the loamy dream of a Mancunian summer, he feels hands upon him.

The shock of contact, even over his clothes, is enough to make him start, his eyes snap open. He makes to sit up, but Hickey shakes his head and presses him back, tutting like a nursemaid, “Now, Sergeant,” he says, “the point is to rest.” 

And god save him, Tozer lies back down. Because he is tired, and because he thinks he already knows what kind of man Hickey is. He knows and he does not know, and he must find out.

He flinches, he cannot help it, when Hickey’s cold fingertips reach for the buttons that fasten his breeches. Cornelius grins, pressing his palm against Tozer’s parts, kneading with all the professional frankness of a back-alley whore. Solomon has not been handled by anyone but his own rough hands for years, and even then in brief and hurried moments, keen to have it done with and the urge allayed. 

Still, nothing stirs, and no wonder - Solomon has one eye on the opening of the tent, an ear out for footsteps and brittle rocks crunching beneath him. Cornelius is undeterred and perseveres without impatience, turning his wrist this way and that to apply the heel of his hand, his fingers fanning and grasping. Ashamed, Solomon raises an arm to stop him, gripping his slim wrist - so slim that Tozer’s thumb and forefinger meet around it, finding the very softest part. The fragile fair skin is so smooth and warm, it takes him by surprise and he can’t help stroking it as he pulls Hickey’s hand away.

That is when Cornelius looks up at him, a light shining in his eyes, triumphant, as if Solomon has revealed himself. He does move his hand, he lies down beside Tozer and reaches up, touching his face this time. He places that same insistent palm against Tozer’s aching jaw, warm and light, smallest finger curling gently beneath his earlobe, thumb just tracing the corner of Tozer’s blistered mouth.

He watches him, all the while, and Solomon is half expecting him to start talking, start whispering all of those things he likes to flatter with. He doesn’t speak, though, he only touches, and Tozer begins to feel a warmth growing in the pit of his hungry belly, a sharpening want. He salivates. 

His hand is still clutching Hickey’s wrist as he is caressed and petted into arousal like a skittish maid. Remembering he is a man, Tozer lets go, dropping his arm to slide underneath Hickey and pulling their bodies together with what force he can muster. Hickey makes a noise which is something like surprise, something like satisfaction, and bends his head to press his lips to Solomon’s neck. 

No longer being watched, Tozer is free to close his eyes, finally, and grow drunk on the sensation of being touched, and being yearned for. They strain against each other. Hickey’s hand travels down again, circling a fingertip around every gleaming brass button on Tozer’s jacket as he does, and sliding his hot wet tongue over the point where Tozer’s neck meets his shoulder, setting him blazing. He sucks and grazes with his teeth. Tozer feels heat flood upwards through him and he tightens his arm around Hickey, needing to be closer still, to feel the shape of him. 

He’s narrow waisted enough to be a girl. His skin is soft and pale. He could be a girl. It doesn’t matter what sets you off, as long as you turn your thoughts the right way when you get down to it, Tozer tells himself. 

He has to bite back a cry when Hickey finally finds his prick, now at attention, and kneads him once again. Hickey grins against his skin and murmurs, “There now, Sergeant.”

“On with it, then,” Solomon returns, through gritted teeth.

For once Hickey obeys an order, and deftly flicks open Tozer’s breeches, pulling away entirely for one dreadful moment to realign himself, taking Tozer firmly in his hand and then bowing down to swallow him whole.

Tozer squeezes his eyes shut and groans as quietly as he is able. He will lose his mind before this has seen its end. He arches his back to reach further; to pour himself into Hickey’s mouth, to offer himself up and be consumed. Hickey makes a small, muffled sound, but he doesn’t let up, and allows every inch of this invasion. 

Still, the shale and his bruised shoulders mean that Tozer cannot support himself in this manner for very long, and he falls back into the furrow he has created. It holds him fast. 

He reaches down to touch Hickey’s hair, and has a burning desire to hoist him up onto him, to feel the weight of another person. Hickey, the devil, seems to sense some measure of this want as he applies his hand to the maddening twisting and squeezing of Tozer's prick, still working his hot little mouth and searing tongue. The other hand he slides up under Tozer’s shirt, untucking it from his breeches and stroking at the bare skin beneath, coyly rubbing at his hip bone, and Tozer finds he likes that best of all; it is what brings him finally over, with a dry gasp that pulls like a stitch in his lungs, a hot convulsion in every quarter, and then airless, limbless, scattered. 

Something broken, something gained. 

Hickey does not stop, he sees him through and further, until Tozer must drag him away by the hair, and then Cornelius rises, smiling, eyes clouded with his own wants now. 

Still lost, caught between worlds with the velvet hills in the small of his back and the brutal Arctic sky above him, Tozer grabs at Hickey’s jacket and pulls him forward, down, over him. Cornelius is obliging, allowing himself to be heaved about, and seats himself astride Solomon’s middle, his hips rutting urgently as Tozer takes even himself by surprise and kisses Hickey, to feel that wet, insistent mouth again, that clever darting tongue.

He doesn’t know if it is madness, lust or self-preservation, but Tozer refuses to be indebted to Hickey for anything, and thrusts his hand inside Hickey’s trousers, finds the opening at the front of his drawers and closes his fingers around his cock. He worries for a moment that he is inept, clumsy, but there’s no trick to it, and Hickey is so eager he does the job for him. Tozer only grips tighter as Hickey beings to pant and squirm, fucking Tozer’s hand as their lips and teeth crash together and the parts between them where skin meets skin grow slick with sweat.

He doesn’t make a sound when he spends, only halts, rigid, holding his breath as he spurts against Tozer’s leg. Even if it stains, Tozer supposes his slops will cover it. 

Hickey pulls away quickly, and Tozer has no excuse to bring him back, so they lie side by side, rapidly cooling. Solomon tucks himself away and buttons himself back up, and Cornelius hands him the cigarette he rolled, then rolls another for himself, lying on his back, with the paper and tobacco on his chest. He lights a match, they turn towards each other to share the flame, and fall apart once more, silent. The tent fills with soft grey smoke.

Solomon feels he could sleep now, for days and days.

He turns to look at Hickey in profile, long nose, lips - red and swollen and wet - pursed around his cigarette as he puffs away, perfectly himself. Tozer wants to reach for him, and opens his mouth to speak.

Hickey anticipates this, shakes his head sharply, still staring up at the canvas, “Hush now, Sol,” he says. “Don’t spoil it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
